American Capital

American Capital, Ltd. is a publicly traded private equity firm and global asset manager. American Capital, both directly and through its asset management business, originates, underwrites and manages investments in middle market private equity, leveraged finance, real estate and structured products. American Capital manages $23 billion of assets, including assets on its balance sheet and fee earning assets under management by affiliated managers, with $80 billion of total assets under management (including levered assets). Founded in 1986 and publicly traded since 1997, American Capital has eight offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Through its private equity and leveraged finance business, American Capital participates in management and employee buyouts either by providing mezzanine and senior debt financing for buyouts led by private equity firms or by providing capital directly to companies through a One Stop Buyout® in which it funds senior debt, mezzanine and equity and is the controlling shareholder. American Capital and its affiliates invest from $10 million to $600 million per company in North America and €10 million to €300 million per company in Europe.

Capital market

Capital markets are financial markets for the buying and selling of long-term debt or equity-backed securities. These markets channel the wealth of savers to those who can put it to long-term productive use, such as companies or governments making long-term investments. Capital markets are defined as markets in which money is provided for periods longer than a year.
Financial regulators, such as the UK's Bank of England (BoE) or the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), oversee the capital markets in their jurisdictions to protect investors against fraud, among other duties.

Modern capital markets are almost invariably hosted on computer-based electronic trading systems; most can be accessed only by entities within the financial sector or the treasury departments of governments and corporations, but some can be accessed directly by the public. There are many thousands of such systems, most serving only small parts of the overall capital markets. Entities hosting the systems include stock exchanges, investment banks, and government departments. Physically the systems are hosted all over the world, though they tend to be concentrated in financial centres like London, New York, and Hong Kong.